Alan Stutts | BLOG | Education Author

Every telephone call to an employer is a job interview, an interview you initiate. You must put the same preparation time and effort into it as if you were meeting in the employer’s office. At a face-to-face interview, you give the interviewer a copy of your resume. On the telephone, you deliver your verbal resume.

When you respond to an ad or use direct mail, you send your resume to the person with whom you want an interview. When you call to follow-up on the resume you sent, you deliver your verbal resume to remind them who you are.

If you are using direct contact, your verbal resume is how you introduce yourself to the person you call.

Your verbal resume is a succinct summary of your qualification and your experience. It is not a list of all of the jobs you have held. Begin with the script you prepared for making networking contacts. Also use your objective statement from your resume. You rewrite these to sound conversational.

Open the verbal resume by introducing yourself and telling the person why you are calling. You’ll need one opening for calls that follow-up and one for cold calls.

Follow the opening with the resume statement, the reason why this person should listen to you.

Close the verbal resume with a request for an interview.

In both food service and lodging, salaries for managers can vary widely, depending on the size, location, and market. Managers in limited service diners are not likely to earn as much as managers in upscale, white-line restaurants.

Median annual earnings of lodging managers were $33,970 in 2002 according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle 50 percent earned between $26,110 and $44,670. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $20,400, while the highest 10 percent earned more than $59,420.

Salaries of lodging managers vary greatly according to their responsibilities and the segment of the hotel industry in which they are employed, as well as the location and region where the hotel is located. Managers may earn bonuses of up to 25 percent of their basic salary in some hotels and also may be furnished with lodging, meals, parking, laundry, and other services. In addition to providing typical benefits, some hotels offer profit-sharing plans and educational assistance to their employees.

Many establishments in the hospitality industry are open 24-hours day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Employees work in shifts, work weekends, and work holidays. Some establishments have rotating shifts, where you may work days one week, nights the next, and a split shift the following week. The days of the week you work can also not be change frequently. In a smaller establishment, there may enough staff to still in for illnesses or emergencies, so you may have to work extra days or extra shifts when these contingencies arise.

Resort and vacation businesses may be open year-round, but nearly empty during the off-season. They experience dramatic shifts in the size of the workforce and the hours of operations when seasons change. In such a seasonal establishment, you may even be laid-off for several weeks or months a year. If you are a resident manager, whether of a small motel or at a large resort, you may be on-call 24-hours a day and expected to fill-in on short-notice.

Types of Career Tests

There are two primary kinds of career tests.

Performance tests measure how much you know, how well you read and write, how well you learn, and how skilled you are.

Assessment tests measure personal characteristics like interests, work values, and personality traits. They don’t have right or wrong answers; there is no need to study for them.

Assessment tests fall into three categories:

Interest Inventories helps you identify your interests related to the world of work. An inventory can assist you in identifying training, education, or careers with activities that you might like doing.

Work Values Instruments allow you to pinpoint what you value in jobs (such as achievement, autonomy, recognition, support, and conditions of work) and then identify occupations that share your work values and the characteristics of jobs.

Personality Measures help identify your personal style in dealing with tasks, data, and other people. An understanding of your personality helps you to make decisions about training programs, which jobs to apply for, or which career direction to take.

If you already know you want to work in the hospitality industry, work value and personality measures may be the most helpful tests for you. Some such tests, such s the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator, are too sophisticated for you to interpret on your own and you need to have your results analyzed by someone trained in career counseling or psychology.

Preparing for a career is time consuming and costly. Before you embark on college or an expensive training program, you want to be sure your personal values and dreams are supported by the career you are training for. You’ll also want to know if you have the personality for the career you want. If you are already working in hospitality and want to advance, you need to consider how your current skills and experience have prepared you to advance or if you have gaps you need to fill.

Potential employers may require you to take both psychological and performance tests as condition of employment or advancement. Research shows that only one employee in every seven hired after a successful interview delivers well on the job. Assessing behavioral traits can improve hiring success rates to thirty-eight percent. When both thinking abilities and behavioral traits are assessed, the right people are hired fifty-four percent of the time. Adding occupational interests to the assessment increases the rate of successful hiring to sixty-six percent.

You can avoid the disappointment of being rejected for a position or failing to succeed in a position by making sure you are training for the right career and getting the right training for that career.

A management career in hospitality typically means you are responsible for managing staff, managing the business operations, or managing the financial side of things. A general manager manages other managers!
In food service, a manager typically hires, trains, supervises, and discharges the service workers who do the day-to-day work. A manager may also purchase supplies, deal with vendors, keep records, and help whenever an extra hand is needed. An Executive chef oversees the kitchen, selects the menu, trains cooks and food preparation workers, and directs the preparation of food. In fine-dining establishments, maitre d’s serve as hosts or hostesses while overseeing the dining room. Larger establishments employ general managers, who then have assistant managers for each department. Food service managers are often part owners of the establishments they manage.

Lodging establishments employ many different types of managers to direct and coordinate the activities of the front office, kitchen, dining room, and other departments, such as housekeeping, accounting, personnel, purchasing, publicity, sales, and maintenance. Managers make decisions on room rates, establish credit policy, and have ultimate responsibility for resolving problems. In small establishments, the manager also may perform much of the front-office clerical work. In the smallest establishments, the owners-sometimes a family team-do all the work necessary to operate the business.

Job growth in lodging is still affected by the downturn in the lodging services segment since 2000, but things are looking up. In lodging, employment of lodging managers is growing more slowly than other management positions partly due to the trend towards in economy and budget commercial hotels where fewer amenities mean fewer departments to be managed. Managers in mid-scale, upscale, and luxury hotels and in chain-affiliated hotels and motels have more opportunities because of the higher number of management jobs. In chains, managers can also expect opportunities to move into general manager positions at one of the properties or take a corporate job setting policy.

As more Americans travel in recreational vehicles, managers will be needed for an increasing number of RV parks. The increase in casino hotels means more gaming manager occupations need to be filled.
By 2012, the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics expects overall number of jobs in the hospitality industry is to increase to 11.2 million from the 10.2 million counted in 2002 to, an increase of 16.4. By 2010, the industry will need 100,000 more managers each year, to keep pace with the employment growth, according to the National Restaurant Association.

In lodging, employment of lodging managers is growing more slowly than other management positions due to the increase in economy commercial hotels with fewer departments to be managed. Managers in chain-affiliated hotels and motels, however, can expect opportunities to move into general manager positions or corporate jobs.

Owner/managers of small lodging places will not have these opportunities. As more Americans travel in recreational vehicles, managers will be needed for an increasing number of RV parks.